Between the 19th and 20th centuries, numerous musicians dedicated themselves to composing music for children: from Schumann’s Album für die Jugend to Mussorgsky’s The Nursery, from George Bizet’s Jeux d’enfants to Sergey Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf… Among these, Poulenc with his famous Histoire de Babar, le petit éléphant and Debussy with one of the works dedicated to his daughter Emma-Claude, known as “Chouchou”: the puppet ballet La boîte à joujoux. The music is vivid, delicate, and ironically humorous, often bubbling with humor yet technically challenging, making it unthinkable for novice musicians. Instead, these compositions are musical reflections on the world of children and their imagination, often tinged with nostalgia for an age now unreachable and irretrievably lost.
To play these multifaceted pieces, comes back in Turin a key figure in the Italian music scene: Antonio Ballista, a pianist curious and open to the most diverse musical expressions.
